One day my manager showed me a horrible graph. It was pretty
simple: the graph was steady, then it dropped straight down, then
after a short period, the line shot straight back up and stayed
level again.

“That’s what happens when we do the right thing”, he said while
pointing at the drop, “and that’s how much money we lose. We tried
it just to see how bad it was for our bottom line. And this is
what the data tells us.”

“Wow,” I said, taken aback. My employer clearly had two options:
“do the right thing” or “be profitable”. That was the position
they had maneuvered themselves into through a series of bad
management decisions.

Once you’re backed into a corner like this, where your users’ happiness and satisfaction are no longer aligned with your revenue, you’ve already lost. It’s like the dark side of the Force — you should never even start down that path, or you’ll be corrupted.